Getting the Tigers by the Tail

Submitted by Daniel Pliska, Executive Chef, University Club of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.

by C&RB Staff (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
April 2008
 

Daniel Pliska, Executive Chef, University Club of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.

Standing in the Tiger Suites at Faurot Field at the University of Missouri during the last home football game of the season, I looked out and thought, “What a great year.”

Missouri’s football team was finishing perhaps the greatest season in the school’s history. But that wasn’t all that made the year great for me. At the same time the team went 12-2 in a season that culminated with a Cotton Bowl victory and a number-four national ranking, my culinary team and I also enjoyed unprecedented success, as we helped to upgrade and provide the best food and service members and guests in the stadium’s football suites had ever experienced.

It all began when our University Club Manager, John LaRocca, brokered a deal with the school’s Athletic Department, which was looking to provide a better product for its stadium suite holders. Previously, the Athletic Department had tried to handle cooking and provide service for the suites in-house. While the department had a state-of the-art kitchen in the stadium, it had found that securing the staffing and expertise needed to serve as many as 5,000 people who would want to eat on Homecoming Weekend was a much bigger challenge.

The department came to us because of our proven track record of catering excellence. But this would represent a major new challenge for us, too—and the key to our success would be our ability to pull from our existing infrastructure of staff and procedures and still provide the food and service that would meet the standards expected by the suiteholders.
After the deal was worked out, I took on my role as the Executive Chef, while Hans Ritten, Dining Room Manager and Robin Whitely, Catering Manager, served with me as Executive Committee members. We had less than two months to plan and organize before the first kickoff.

We started by working out a plan for buffet service that would serve up to 1,700 people (the anticipated traffic for most games) during the six home football games, as well as personalized catering for the individual suites. Massive planning, teamwork and coordination made the whole plan come together. As the initial step, we developed an extremely detailed plan for these areas:
• Budget, with projected revenues as well as expenses
• Service Plan: who and how to do it (with an organizational flow chart)
• POS system for the suites (the one in place didn’t meet expectations)
• Buffet menus for the six home games, plus regular football and basketball suite menus (we were also contracted to serve the basketball arena for that season) and the catering menu for private parties held in the suites
• Kitchen execution plans
• Buffet layouts and an equipment procurement plan

Preparing to successfully serve as many as 5,000 diners in the football suites hinged on a three-step plan: 1) transform what was formally a storage room into a staging kitchen; 2) cross-utilize both food and recipes, to maximize efficiency and minimize waste; and 3) bolster the culinary staff through an exchange program with other properties.

We also needed to figure out how to stage food for the actual event. Our culinary operations involve the University Club’s banquet and dining room kitchen, a catering kitchen in another building, and (through this partnership) a kitchen in the basketball arena. I decided to upgrade a large storage room with a small walk-in and some coolers for beer and alcohol, with more electrical lines for mobile hot boxes. This was on the second floor of the football stadium, and we would need to run the food up to three other floors for the buffets. The buffets would become the main focal point and the area that we determined would elicit the biggest “wow” from the suite holders.

The buffet menus were each themed to specific cuisine types (for examples, go to www.clubandresortbusiness.com). All would include ice carvings, action stations and/or carving stations—for a per-person price of $15. In all cases, the buffets included menu items I had already tested in the club and catering kitchens.

One great concern was the amount of staff we would need for these events, during a time of year when the club and catering operations were already running at full production. This challenge was met through a “culinary exchange program,” where we would treat the situation as one would at a seasonal resort, by bringing in extra help when needed.

I had laid the groundwork for this during the summer, when I sent apprentices and other culinary staff members to top-class kitchens such as the Big Cedar Lodge in Branson, Mo. The Lodge’s Executive Chef, Robert Stricklen, CEC, was then able to reciprocate by sending interns and staff for the football weekends.

I also received some help from the students at a culinary school in St Louis, where our club’s General Manager is a member of the Advisory Board. While this may be a common practice in the resort industry, it is not as widely practiced in the private club business—but it’s something every club should look, to be able to take on business of this magnitude.
An added benefit of the program is how it exposes our culinary team to new and different kitchens. This helps to build morale by sharing knowledge and cultures with other properties, and also expands training.

So—did we end up having as good a year as the football team? While the Tigers had a phenomenal season, I think we might have done just as well. Our partnership with the Athletics Department garnered much praise from the suite holders, as well as from the University’s management staff. Even better, it added close to 30% more revenue than our prior year’s F&B sales of $3.2 million for Club and Catering operations combined.

As an added long-term benefit, we have now expanded our operational space with another venue that we can use for large catered events (previously, our capacity was 320 for a seated dinner in our largest ballroom). In fact, largely because of the exposure we received through this project, we have already booked a two-night centennial party for our Journalism School in the fall, for a forecasted 3,000 covers per night.

To me, those are all very impressive statistics that can match any that were put up by the football team—even one that ended up ranked in the Top Five in the country!

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